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The ‘mass failure’ recorded by many candidates in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) has been decried by many of the candidates, parents and education experts. Out of 1,340,003 candidates that registered for the UTME, 1,300, 722 sat for the examination. Speaking on this year’s UTME results, the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, said 99.65 per cent scored 120 marks and above, out of the possible 400 in the 2021 examination, as against 99.80 per cent in 2020. Many stakeholders believe that this year’s poor performance is unprecedented in the history of the examination.
While some of the candidates blamed the examination agency for the poor outing, JAMB spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, absolved the agency of any blame in the alleged mass failure. He insisted that all UTME questions were based on the prescribed syllabus for the examination and which was issued to all candidates after registration.
Benjamin blamed the failure on “disgruntled candidates, who were ill-prepared for the examination” and pointed out that “those whose illicit source of income has been blocked were behind reports of mass failure.”
However, the JAMB boss, Oloyede, has blamed the poor performance of candidates in the UTME on the coronavirus pandemic. According to him, “all informed education experts understand why we recorded a lot of failures this time round. They knew the point at which we were in the academic calendar before the examination was taken in 2020 and in 2021.” Oloyede also contended that “the students had gone far in their syllabus last year before they took the examination. But this year, they suffered incomplete academic sessions.”
Arising from these, Oloyede argued further that “these candidates had to cope with emergency online lessons with many other disturbing factors like insecurity, so we shouldn’t have expected that the results will come out unaffected by these.”
It is unfortunate that this year’s UTME is trailed with complaints by many candidates, parents and education experts over the performance of many candidates. While not holding brief for either the affected candidates or the examination body, it will not be out of place for JAMB to review the marking of the 2021 UTME to find out if there is machine error in the exercise.
It is possible that a machine error can lead to mass failure in computer-based examination. And since the computer-based examination is still in its experimental stages, there is need to ensure that any problem emanating from the exercise is promptly addressed. Therefore, the complaints by candidates, parents and other stakeholders on the 2021 UTME results should not be dismissed or waved aside in the usual Nigerian pattern of doing things.
The examination agency should not be quick in defending itself on matters of this nature. As a public institution, it should listen and address the complaints raised against its conduct of the 2021 UTME. That is the only way to assure the candidates, parents and others of its thoroughness and transparency in the conduct of its examination.
Besides, the agency should address the noticeable lapses in this year’s UTME, which included malfunctioning servers, computers, not keeping to time and abrupt change of examination venues. Registration for UTME should be simplified. The complication of the process in each examination year does not necessarily prevent cheating or manipulation of examination results.
We urge the examination body to put its house in order and ensure that all the centres for the examination are well equipped for the exercise to avoid unnecessary hitches that may adversely affect the performance of candidates.
While the revenue profile of the examination body has increased so much under the leadership of Oloyede, it is worth pointing out that JAMB is first and foremost an examination body and not a revenue-generating agency. Its primary function is to conduct matriculation examination into tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Ensuring the integrity of its examination is of paramount importance. Therefore, the apparent emphasis on revenue generation must be jettisoned forthwith.
Following the public outcry on this year’s UTME, there is need for a thorough review of this year’s results. Let the examination agency set up a panel to do the review as well as audit its internal operations.
